Inside Croydon

Housing minister’s attack against the Green Party leader may have back-fired, as the cabinet member flagged up reports linking him to the unlawful hacking of this website. By STEVEN DOWNES

The illegal hacking of this website in 2021 has been placed front and centre in the national news after Steve Reed, the MP for Streatham (and Croydon North when he can be bothered), chose to question someone else’s morality on Christmas Day.

Multiple-year settlements for councils in England and an end to the postcode lottery that has been local authority funding from Whitehall, as £78bn is allocated in effort to ‘end deprivation’. By STEVEN DOWNES

Croydon Council will receive an extra £40million each year for the next three years in its annual grant from central government it was announced today.

The news was made in a parliamentary statement in the House of Commons just before 3pm by Alison McGovern, the Minister of State for local government.

Housing correspondent, BARRATT HOLMES, on a developer-friendly decision which might yet set the trend for all of London

This is what you get when you “Build, baby! Build!”

Merton Council has granted planning approval for 626 homes on the Mitcham Gasworks site, with not a single unit to be designated as “affordable housing”.

Streatham and Croydon North MP Steve Reed, the Secretary of State for housing, must be so pleased to see his property developer-friendly approach having such an immediate impact…

A former pupil at Croydon’s BRIT School has been sentenced to almost two years in prison after being found guilty of having what the Met Police have described as “extreme right-wing material” on his phone.

Declan George-Candiani, 26, a self-proclaimed Satanist who claimed he made a pact with a “red-horned devil”, was given a 23-month sentence at the Old Bailey last week, where the judge ordered he serve an additional year on licence. He will also be subject to notification requirements for 10 years.

KEN TOWL delved into the little-known world of local literary societies, the ‘Lits’, where talk is cheap and at least the fruitcakes promise ‘no nuts’

I have discovered a hidden world, a world that exists in the shadows, a world in which people, mostly retired people, visit buildings, mostly churches, between the months of October and March, to hear about such topics as “Paranormal Mysteries and Cover-Ups” and “A Conspiracy Theory of the World”.

Local cemeteries and high streets are popular topics, too.

Romario Gordon was today sentenced at the Old Bailey to 13 years in prison for his part in the killing of 16-year-old Camron Smith in front of his mother, in July 2021.

The jury at his trial at the Central Criminal Courtr was told that Gordon was a member of a Thornton Heath drugs gang who went out “hunting as a pack”, armed with weapons including a zombie knife, and pursued the teenager into a bedroom of his own home on Shirley’s Shrublands Estate.

Labour government is ignoring scientific advice on the risks posed by proposals in their new Bill, while senior ministers have been cosying up to lobbyists for developers, reports PAUL LUSHION, our environment correspondent

Croydon MP Steve Reed, the former environment secretary, in his new role as housing minister, is ordering Labour MPs to vote against amendments which would provide important legal protections from development for wildlife and the environment.

Bankrupt Woking to get an unprecedented debt write-off from government, but new West Surrey Council to be burdened with £4.5bn of borrowing from Day 1 in 2027

Twelve local authorities in Surrey, including Tandridge, Epsom and Ewell and Reigate and Banstead district councils, are to be scrapped and two new, unitary county councils created, probably as early as April 2027, in Whitehall plans to reform local government.

Three years ago, Al Jazeera broadcast a series of films, called The Labour Files, based on information gleaned from one of the biggest data leaks in history. One episode was devoted to events that took place in Croydon in early 2021.

PAUL HOLDEN’s new book, The Fraud has been described as ‘the most damning portrayal yet of a political project at once proudly Machiavellian but entirely devoid of moral and intellectual substance’.

CONFERENCE NOTEBOOK: Bringing Croydon’s trains back into public ownership and putting more emphasis on apprenticeships are among some of the announcements made by Labour figures in Liverpool, where ANDREW FISHER, pictured left, was checking out the queues for Steve Reed’s MAGA-style hats

Steve Reed, the Labour MP for Streatham and Croydon North, was an ubiquitous presence in the first days of the 2025 Labour Party conference here in Liverpool.